This is because elderly people are seeing their life expectancy increase every year. Furthermore, the evolution of social structures results in these people leading a more and more solitary existence, or living within specialised structures.
For people living alone, this isolation is an acute problem since they are at risk of dying of the consequences of a fall owing to an inability to call for assistance. In the case of specialised structures, the detection of falls is also very important if it is desirable to keep care staff at a reasonable level and a realistic cost for providing care, without for all that risking cases of litigation regarding responsibility for lack of supervision.
The increasing awareness of these problems has resulted in studies being carried out which have shown that more than 7500 people die each year in France as a result of a fall which has not been detected in time, or from the consequences of a fall which has not been dealt with in a timely manner.
The Applicant has proposed a device which allows such falls to be detected and which is, for example, in the form of a carpet or complete floor with standard dimensions. This device is described in the French patent application FR 11/02512. Such a device can be used in a hospital or in a retirement home, for example, and is based on the conversion of pressure brought about by a fall into an electrical signal which is associated with a known location in order to detect this fall. These devices may include all the floors of a health establishment, or at least the portions thereof which are intended to be walked on by elderly persons.
Such devices are appreciated and comply with their objectives. However, their creation has led to the occurrence of another requirement. The Applicant has found that the design and the production of such devices are carried out without taking into account the specific nature of the locations in which they are intended to be installed. This limits the suitability of “sensitive carpets” for their intended environment, that is to say, bedrooms, corridors and communal rooms. This is because the diversity of shapes and surfaces of floors to be covered is great. Consequently, either there is proposed a range of very varied shapes and surfaces of carpet and coverings, even made-to-measure, at high costs, or there is proposed a restricted range of models which are less adaptable but at a limited cost. This is not entirely satisfactory.
On the other hand, these sensitive floor coverings involve the use of electrical cabling in a quantity which is substantially proportional to the covering surface. When significant surfaces have to be covered, such as corridors of health establishments, the electrical cabling becomes a critical parameter as a result of the spatial requirement thereof and the quantity thereof. The increase of costs associated with the electrical cabling makes all the more worthwhile the efforts which are intended to limit the use thereof, both from the point of view of the quantity of cables required, and from the point of view of the time required to assemble it.